21
Shoaib Nasir (Pakistan)
I was born to Muhammadan parents in 1971. I first finished the Koran in Arabic when I was about five years old. After reading it for the first time, I told my mother that since I did not understand a word of it I would like to read it in Urdu. Consequently, my mother gave me another copy of the Koran with a Urdu translation. That translation opened my eyes, even at that age, to an ideology I did not think anybody could adopt in good conscience. I was particularly perturbed by Muhammad's narcissism. Every other line seemed to reiterate that he was Allah's beloved last prophet (read: sidekick). I found the book mostly disgusting. Further, one thing that really bothered me was the fact that under Islamic law one could not preach any other religion in the country. However, when Muhammadans went to other countries, they wanted (and still do with even more fervor) the freedom to practice, preach, and convert others. I can say with utmost confidence that I have never seen such a shameless display of hypocrisy in any other ideology. I also think that only Muhammadans can pull it off; I do not think there are too many people on this planet dishonest enough to have such blatant double standards.
At the age of five or six, my comparative study was based on the fact that in Muhammad's ideology people were not allowed to eat pork, but in Christianity they were. I found myself confused in terms of which of the two ideologies was revealed by Allah. I asked my mother. Fortunately, she did not give me the Muhammadan pat answer that Allah revealed only Muhammad's ideology and the rest of the religions were its corrupted version.
My earliest memory is of being disrespectful to Muhammad's ideology. My mother always asked me to carry Muhammad's book above my head respectfully. I always carried it above my head when I was in sight. Once I neared the cabinet, I would put the book on the floor and step on it before I put it in the assigned place. Such was my contempt at that age toward a religion I believed was a madman's musing. Similarly, if I dropped the book, I was supposed to kiss the book and touch it with my forehead; in short, I had kissed the book many times long before I actually got to kiss a girl.
When religion was made mandatory in the school system I remember reading accounts of assassinations by Muhammad's sidekicks. I remember being horrified by accounts of beheadings, especially when the accounts said that suchand-such companion of Muhammad's beheaded the enemy with one big stroke. I also did not like Muhammad's wallowing in accounts of what happened in hell. The accounts made it seem as if Muhammad's only grievance at the time was that his enemies happened to be rich. It seemed that the only reason for Muhammad's sick mind conjuring up images of hell was his passive-aggressive anger. The accounts reeked of jealousy.
In short, such was the violence against my innocence against my will.
I also had a chance to see the film Buddha when I was about six or seven. I asked my father what he was about. What my father told me about him seemed more appealing than what I had seen in Muhammad's teachings. Buddhism seemed far more enlightened than anything else at the time. From that point onward, I used to tell everybody at school that I was a Buddhist. Once, when I was seven, I was questioned by a friend's mother. It so happened that this friend told his mother that I had told everybody that I was a Buddhist. During the break, she asked me how I was a Buddhist and if I was born to Buddhist parents, and so on. I told her that my parents were not Buddhist, only I was.
When I was about ten, I realized that people generally did not want me to play with girls because Muhammadanism asked people to separate boys from girls. I guess Muhammad understood how to make people submissive-by regimenting every single act. Following Freudian principles, one can argue that Muhammad gave women back to his followers only in heaven after taking them away for so long.
At the age of eleven, partly due to peer pressure and partly due to confusion accompanied by my attaining puberty, I practiced Muhammadanism blindly for about one and a half years. I offered prayers, observed fast, and so forth. Finally, at about thirteen, I came home one day and announced to my mother that there was no god, and religion was just a sham. A few days later, the muezzin at our mosque was caught raping a six-year-old boy. However, due to the community's senseless ness, the muezzin was released without any charges being brought against him. This was the same muezzin who, while claiming to be upright and beyond reproach, for the past six years had preached anti-Semitism and hatred for the West.
Nineteen eighty-eight was a great year in my life. I was sixteen and fortunate enough to read Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian. It was a whiff of fresh air in my life. Having grown up in Zia-ul-Haque's regime, I had lost all hope. After reading the book I decided to stand up for who I was and finally decided not to go to the mosque even for the perfunctory family ritual of Eid prayers twice a year. I'm glad to say that I haven't stepped inside a mosque in the last fourteen years. I had mixed feelings, though, because now my father had to go to Eid prayers by himself. However, my contempt for the religion was so strong that I could not convince myself to go with him.
Nineteen eighty-eight was also great because on August 17, in a great turn of events, Zia was blasted out of existence. A few days before his death he had decided to introduce Muhammad's shari`a. Following Khomeini's principles, Zia wanted to introduce mandatory attendance at all five prayers. He had not finalized at this point what kind of punishment he would introduce; however, he did mention that people would get a lashing in public for not showing up at the mosque. When I finished watching his national address, I looked at my brother. He asked me what was going to happen to us and where we would go. Since no countries other than Thailand and Singapore gave the inhabitants of a terrorist/rogue state visas, I said to my brother firmly that I would leave for Singapore but I would not offer prayers. Luckily, Zia disappeared into thin air on August 17, 1988. I often wonder about the last few minutes of his life. I wonder how he behaved.
In 1988 1 also thought out my project on Muhammad, of which I had some vague idea even before then and on which I have been working since. Zia's regime was full of persecution of atheists and secular people. He had heavily armed the student faction of Jamalat-i Islami (fundamentalist organization) to Muham- madanize the country. He had also hired many jammat people to teach kids at primary and secondary school level, so by the time the students joined the university and the workforce they were thoroughly brainwashed. By the way, during his regime, "secularism" in Urdu was translated as "religionless," which goes against the grain of Muhammad's ideology, where religion is the basis of everything. People with an ideology different than Muhammad's were punished by the Jama'at-i Islami and and its student wing, jamiat. In grade 11, I saw people's kneecaps being broken by jamiat members. I also saw students being tortured for having bought a female classmate a soft drink at the University of the Punjab cafeteria. A male student's naked body was found in Sheikh Zaid Hospital compound in Lahore early one morning. He was dead; the doctors who performed the autopsy said that every single hair on his body had been plucked and hot iron had been applied to his body. In short, in doctors' words, he looked like a boiled chicken.
At about eighteen, I had a chance to read Salman Rushdie's great book The Satanic Verses. It was banned and one could be put to death if found in possession of the book. I could not get the original; however, I found a photocopied version.
At about nineteen, I was doing a master's degree. I had finally managed to eat pork, courtesy of the American Center. I had become a social drinker as well. Eating pork had been on the top of my list for quite some time. Symbolically speaking, it was for me the last rite of passage required to part ways with Muhammadanism completely. My next step was to read more about the fact and fiction in what Muhammad had so carefully crafted in barbaric Arabia, thinking that he had arrived at some critical juncture in human history without accepting the fact that far superior cultures had already come into existence around the world. Anyway, Rushdie's book had gone in only so much depth. He had only scratched the surface; I was positive that the ideology had more filth hiding deep below.
One of my main goals at that time was to move to the Western part of the planet, so I could do more research on Muhammad and do a better project. I finally left for good in 1995, about a year after finishing my master's degree. My move to the West has completely disillusioned me. Academic clerisy, for the most part, has decided to jump on the political correctness bandwagon and not criticize Muhammad and his ideology at all. In most religious studies programs, professors criticize every religion on the face of the earth except the aforementioned. Some libraries have not even considered ordering Ibn Warraq's Whys I Am Not a Muslim and The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. However, I can find every other book written by Western apologists of Muhammad's ideology. Incidentally, Muhmmad's ideology has the largest number of spin doctors, both Muhammadans and non-Muhammadans, who fail to question the fact that most world religions contradict Islam: they teach us not to kill, not to plunder at any cost. However, Muhammad's ideology in the name of Allah makes a virtue out of everything abhorrent in human nature. Also, some books have ridiculous arguments telling critics not to criticize the aforementioned ideology since it's the fastest growing religion in the world. In my mind, its growth makes it all the more necessary for us to criticize, and then let the ideology stand trial.